Island Crises ....

Spent last weekend on the annual work weekend away - this year it was Mal lorca. A lot of fun - took lots of photos but mainly inside dodgy nightclubs. I'll spare you !! Anyway thought I'd post a couple of non drunken photos - I particularly like the Island Cr_ises .... (These photos were taken with my new camera - a Fuji F30. Its very cool - quite happy with the photos. Great low light performance and nice and small. Aperture and shutter priority too. Handy. Replaces my Sony P100 which seems to be suffering from a few dust spot issues.)

Photos From Canary Wharf

Okay - I know yesterday I said Canary Wharf was interesting (in the context of its history rather than its current state) and that I got some photos - I didnt necessarily mean they were interesting photos.

Canary Wharf

Having some great weather over here at the moment. Decided to head out to Canary Wharf today as I am trying to venture to more places in London that I havent been to. Interesting area - though it would have been more so a hundred years ago ... Walked back from Canary Wharf to Tower Bridge along the north bank of the Thams, stopping at a pub along the way for a sneaky pint. Got a few photos that I will post later once flickr starts accepting uploads again - it seems to be broken,

Got the tickets from some f****d up bloke in Camden Town.

Sweet. Just picked up a couple of tickets to go see Jarvis, as in Mr Jarvis Cocker. He is doing a solo show in November @ Koko in support of a new solo album. Sadly the tickets were actually from ticketmaster ....

Take Me Out

Just got back from seeing Franz Ferdinand play at the Kentish Town Forum. Absolutely brilliant gig. Second to last song there were three guys playing on one drum kit drumming up quite the frenzy. Awesome. Its been a good week for music ....

V Festival (aka My First Radiohead Gig)

Headed up to the V Festival in Chelmsford yesterday. Luckily the rain held off until the last song of the night and it turned out to be a fun day. Strangely, after being quite excited about the line up when I bought the tickets, there didnt seem to be that many bands I wanted to see! I got to see a bit of Beck (didnt see much as have tickets to see him at a much smaller venue in a couple of weeks), The Go! Team (which were pretty cool) and a few other bands which were okay. The highlight of the day, by several orders of magnitude, were Radiohead. I have never seen them before so didnt really know what to expect. They were amazing - Thom Yorkes voice was in fine form. Incredible gig. Brilliant. You get the idea ....

Set list for those who are interested (stolen from ateaseweb.com)
01 Airbag
02 2+2=5
03 The National Anthem
04 My Iron Lung
05 You and Whose Army?
06 Bodysnatchers
07 The Bends
08 Nude ["That was an old bugger, this is a new bugger." Thom]
09 No Surprises
10 The Gloaming
11 Paranoid Android ["You can take your hoodie off Jonny." Thom]
12 All I Need
13 Pyramid Song ["Glad you can appreciate a good song." Thom]
14 Lucky
15 Just
16 Idioteque
17 Street Spirit

Encore 1:
18 A Wolf At The Door
19 There There
20 Karma Police
21 True Love Waits/Everything In Its Right Place

Encore 2:
22 Creep [Thom didn't play guitar]

TAR 10

The Amazing Race Season 10 starts the day before my birthday - isnt that nice of them ...

Keepin The Blog Moving ...

Expect Filler

Okay, not great photos but I got sick of the front page of my blog ....

New Nikon DSLR

It appears that there is a new Nikon DSLR set to be announced in 16 days .. 10 hours ... 20 minutes ... Should be interesting .... 10.2mp. Sweet.

Garden Rescue

After a few months of neglect A and I decided it was time to reclaim the backyard. Since winter the garden of the house next door has been the source of a rampant creeper which had taken over most of our backyard, making it almost impossible to even open the back door. Enough was enough. We headed off to B&Q to buy some hedge shears (where we spotted an actor from the Bill ... ). Back to the house and then 6 full garbage bags later we had our garden back. At which point it was time for a PIMMS or two ... even though it was actually raining - Not that I can complain about the weather. Has been a "heatwave" over here the past week = 30+ degrees ! Nice.

It's A Shame About Ray

Went and saw the Lemonheads last night at an outdoor gig at Somerset House in London. Perfect weather for it - has been about 30 degrees in London which makes for great evenings for outdoor concerts ! Played all the usual suspects. Only disappointment was the one song encore, Rudderless. Grrr. Whats with that. Support were Sleepy Jackson which was a cool surpise. Last place I saw them was the Grosvenor in Perth. Am also off to see them tommorow night. Should be great.

Kensal Green Cemetery II

Some more photos from yesterdays trip to Kensal Green Cemetery. See the rest here.

Kensal Green Cemetery

Spent this afternoon wandering around Kensal Green Cemetery taking some photos. I know that doesn't sound like everyones idea of a fun Saturday, but I needed some Photoshop fodder and after seeing some cool photos on flickr, I decided to head up there for a look. Kensal Green Cemetery was created in 1832 but the earliest gravestone I saw was late 1840s. A few famous people are buried there, but the only names I recognised were Charles Babbage and Wilkie Collins. Anyway, here are are a couple of my favorite photos so far. See the rest as a slideshow here.


That angel is pretty damn scary ...

Greece

After a few rather hectic holidays A & I decided it was time for a relaxing one that didnt involve repacking backpacks every second day or crossing endless sights of the tourist checklist, so we headed off to the Greek island of Mykonos to sit on a beach for a week. It was amazing - beautiful clear water and nice warm weather. Very relaxing - just what I needed. Also managed to get some culture on the way home, dropping in on the Acropolis in Athens. To be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment but that was probably partially to do with it being hot weather and the last day of the holiday !! Photo Slideshow

Saving You From Limbo

Rest assured I have not "fallen into the murky depths of the Thames", as one concerned reader inquired, although it has been tempting as this weekend has been pretty damn hot. Have just got back from a week in Greece where the main activity was lying on the beach - made a nice change from the old backpacking routine of unpacking/repacking every couple of days. Anyway will post photos soon and will try and get back to some semi-regular posting

Queens Birthday Celebrations

Was in town yesterday and dropped past Buckingham Palace to check up on every Australians favorite head of state. There was a ceremony (Trooping of the Color) on to celebrate the Queens Birthday. I didnt actually realise that the Royals were going to put in an appearance so it was a bit of a surprise when they did. Excuse the first photo, someone didnt have their zoom lens so there was a bit of upsize and crop action.



(No the irony isnt lost on me of following up a post about the Morrissey gig with a bit of Royal spotting !!)

Panic On The Streets of London

After seeing a rather dissappointing Morrissey gig at Alexandra Palace at the start of the month, and reading the bad reviews of the first show at the Palladium, I was ready to palm off my Morrissey tickets for last nights gig at the Palladium. That would have been a mistake.
I had fourth row Upper Circle tickets which, in spite of my fears of getting nosebleeds from being up so high, proved to be a pretty good vantage point. Morrissey came on at nine and opened with Panic. Yep, thats right Panic. Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ ..... Awesome stuff. The rest of the playlist virtually followed that of the Alexandra Palace gig (and, well, the rest of the gigs on the tour apparently). But even with virtually the same playlist - it was sooooo much better. The sound was great. The crowd was great. Everyone was really into it and there were no people constantly pushing passed fruitlessly trying to get to the front. Morrissey was in fine form. Our seats gave us a great view of the stage and the numerous stage invasions who Morrissey always tried to shake hands with before they got carted off by security.
The third to last song was How Soon Is Now, followed by the *second* to last song - Irish Blood, English Heart. Yep. *Second* to last song. As far as I know IBEH had been the encore nearly every night of the tour, so I was looking forward to see what he was going to come out with. "Stop me, oh, stop me ...." Yep - Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before. The crowd loved it. A brilliant encore.
This time I left with a smile on my face. Mozz you redeemed yourself ....

Ping ...

Yes I am still alive. It has been a while since my last post. Havent taken any photos for a couple of weeks but I plan on changing that today. Went to see Morrissey last night which was, thank god (after Ally Pally), awesome ! Will post more on that later. My work is moving offices this weekend so Friday arvo was spent packing PCs to ship to the new location. It is just down the river, closer to London Bridge tube - almost walking distance from Waterloo Station which will be handy for me. Should cut about 5-10 minutes of the commute. I managed to score one of the old desks from the office which means I now have a decent computer desk. Nice. Have holidays towards the end of June so am trying to decide what to do - we are thinking that a bit of a walking/hiking holiday might be in order - a bit of a London antidote!

A New Pen ...

I finally lashed out and bought a Wacom Graphire Classic graphics tablet. Don't worry - it is only for photo retouching - I wont subject you to my drawing skills which never really evolved beyond grade five ! So far I am pretty happy with it but it is going to take a bit of getting used to.